The first thing to determine when getting hooked up is whether you're
connecting to a local area network, such as a group of computers in an
office, or a wide area network, such as the Internet. Before
continuing, it's important to know what hardware you have and how you
intend to connect. If you're going to dial into another computer, make
sure your modem is installed and that the cables are attached correctly.
If you're using a network card, make sure it is installed properly and
that the cables are correctly connected. In other words, no matter what
network configuration you specify, if every phone line or cable is not
in place, you'll never get connected.
Setting up a network connection over Ethernet requires an entirely
different type of setup. Network connections to Token Ring or ARCnet
networks follow a similar procedure, but will not be discussed here.
First you will need to have an Ethernet card installed.
Start Linuxconf by typing
linuxconf at the shell prompt.
Open =>
=> => . The Host name tab will
request a hostname, which should be specified by default unless
you did not setup your networking during the installation
process. If it is not already specified, please take the time now
to configure it. It should be specified as
localhost.localdomain. Skip this
tab. Select the tab for Adaptor 1.
The first item on this screen is a checkbox to indicate whether this
adaptor is enabled or not. If this is the one you intend to use, it
should be checked. Below that is a choice of Config
modes. Manual means that you will be
providing all the information and entering it yourself.
Dhcp and Bootp mean that
your machine will be getting its network configuration information
from a remote DHCP or BOOTP server. If you're not sure what option to
choose, talk to your network administrator.
Required fields for DHCP or BOOTP:
Net device — The type of network card
you are using; for example, eth0 would be the appropriate entry to
use the first Ethernet card.
Kernel module — The correct module
based on your network card; refer to the
Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide for a list of kernel modules.
For DHCP and BOOTP configurations, you only need to specify the
Net device and the Kernel
module. For the Net device, you will
choose from a list in which the eth prefix
represents Ethernet cards, arc specifies an
ARCnet card and tr specifies Token Ring cards. A
complete list of network cards and their respective modules can be
found in Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide. For the most up-to-date
list, please see our website at:
The netmask information may be already be set for you. However,
depending upon the type of network you are joining or setting up, you
may need to fill in this field. The most common value for this field
is 255.255.255.0.
Required fields for manual configuration:
Primary name + domain — The primary
name is the name of your computer; the domain is how your network
is specified. For example, foo.bar.com;
foo is the primary name and
bar.com is the domain.
IP address — The address of the machine
will follow this pattern:
x.x
.x.x. For
example, 192.168.0.13.
Net device — The type of network card
you are using; eth0 would be the appropriate entry to use the
first Ethernet card.
Kernel module — The correct module
based on your network card.
Information on network devices and kernel modules is described above.
The appropriate Primary name + domain and
IP address will depend on
whether you are adding the computer to an existing network or creating
a new network. For connecting to an existing network, contact your
network administrator for the information.
If you're setting up a private network that will not
ever be connected to the Internet, then you can
choose any Primary name + domain name
you want and you have several choices for IP
addresses
(see Table 14-1).
Table 14-1. Addresses and Examples
| Available addresses
| Examples
|
|---|
| 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
| 10.5.12.14
|
| 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
| 172.16.9.1, 172.28.2.5
|
| 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.25
[a]
| 192.168.0.13
|
Notes:
a. You should not use these IP addresses if you connect to the
Internet, since 192.168.0.* and 192.168.255.* cannot be considered
private. If you want your network to be connected to the Internet,
or think you might want to at some point in the future, do yourself
a favor and get yourself non-private addresses now.
|
The three sets of numbers above correspond to class a, b, and c
networks respectively. The classes are used to describe the number of
IP addresses available as well as the range of numbers. The numbers
above have been set aside for private networks.
A nameserver and a default domain are also needed to establish a
network connection. The nameserver is used to translate hostnames,
such as private.network.com, to corresponding IP
addresses, such as 192.168.7.3.
The default domain tells the computer where to look if a fully
qualified hostname is not specified. "Fully qualified" means that the
full address is given, so foo.redhat.com is the
fully qualified hostname, while the hostname is simply
foo. If you specified your default domain as
redhat.com, then you could use just the hostname
to connect successfully. For example ftp foo would
be sufficient if your search domain is
redhat.com, while ftp
foo.redhat.com would be required if it was not.
To specify the nameserver, open =>
=> => .
Nameservers are ranked according to the order in which they are
accessed. It is not unusual to see nameservers referred to as
primary, secondary, tertiary and so on down the list if more than one
is specified. Each of these must be an IP address and not a name,
since the computer has no way to resolve the name until it connects to
a nameserver.
In addition to a default domain, you can also specify up to six
search domains. Search domains are useful if you want to specify many
hostnames with the same domain but do not want to type the domain
name. For example, if your search domain is redhat.com, the hostname
falcon would resolve to falcon.redhat.com. Search domains take
precedence over the default domain.
You can add, modify, or delete entries from the
/etc/hosts file using
Linuxconf. Open
=>
=>
=> .
To modify or delete an entry select it. To delete the entry, select
Del at the bottom of the host/network
definition screen.
To modify it, change the information as necessary. To add a new
entry, select Add at the bottom of the
/etc/hosts screen. This will also open the
host/network definition screen.
Required fields:
Primary name + domain — The primary
name is the name of the computer, while the domain is how the
network is specified. For example, in
foo.bar.com, foo is the
primary name and bar.com is the domain.
IP number — Also referred to as IP
address; this is the address of the machine and will follow the
pattern of
x.x.
x.x. For
example, 192.168.0.13.
Optional fields:
Aliases — A shorthand for the fully
qualified domain name. This is often the same as the primary
name. So, for example, if the fully qualified domain name is
foo.bar.com, you could set foo as an alias.
Comment — A comment about the machine.
For example, "The remote nameserver."
Once finished, select Accept.
